Less action for the ladies team
LETLHOGILE MPUANG
Botswana Boxing Association (BoBA) have pointed out that schools final examinations have frustrated their preparation for the upcoming African Union Sport Council (AUSC) Region 5.
Botswana is currently gearing to host this year’s AUSC games in December. The main aim of the games is to use sports to achieve peace, integration and unity in Africa i.e. sport as a vehicle of encouraging people to develop and come together, irrespective of colour, economic status, political, class, or gender. The games are played by athletes under the age of 20 years across more than five sporting codes such as football, athletics, swimming, boxing and netball just to name a few.
In a recent interview with Gazette Sport, BoBA Public Relations Officer (PRO) Taolo Tlouetsile revealed that their preparations were well underway, but pointed out a few challenges that the team selected to represent the country has been faced with.
“We just returned from Namibia we were invited by their youth team in an international friendly. We had a total of about 12 fighters , all male. We were unable to travel with the ladies team because (Namibia) does not have a female team,” Tlouetsile told this publication.
“We had another tournament last weekend in Lobatse hosted by BMC club. Zimbabwe were part of the tournament and we also gave our team a platform to take part in the competition. What we have tried to is that in each inter-club competition that we host we will also have our youth team take part in that as way of helping them prepare for the AUSC games. We want to keep them in shape as much as possible,” he added.
“Our biggest challenge is that we are using school kids and we only get a chance to have camp during school holidays, which is a problem. But our Development Officer Healer Modiradilo is constantly moving around the schools to check up on the boxers, remember that they are preparing for exams,” continued the PRO.
In conclusion he said that the team will have another camp in November, which will be their final before the competition. He says there might also be a few changes to the current team, but they expect the bulk of the team to make the final cut.